| From: The Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2002 DANCE REVIEW By LEWIS SEGAL, Times Staff Writer
ABT
Soloists Embrace Swan Lake's Passion
In
creating a new production of Swan Lake" for American Ballet Theatre two years ago,
artistic director Kevin McKenzie borrowed innovations from a number of previous stagings.
During the prelude, for instance, he showed Rothbart turning Odette into a swan--an idea
from the celebrated, influential Vladimir Bourmeister version of the 1950s. McKenzie even
recycled a concept from the radical Matthew Bourne modern dance Swan Lake" of 1995: a nasty, sensual youth seducing all the
women at the ball, including the Queen Mother.
But, at
the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Friday, McKenzie's patchwork edition proved far
less noteworthy than his casting: international stars Nina Ananiashvili and Julio Bocca
dancing together for the first time on any local stage. Each had visited the Southland
recently at the head of other ensembles: She as the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi, he as
the leading light of Ballet Argentino. Together they provided a memorable sampling of what
New Yorkers have cheered season after season--Ananiashvili's refinement of style meshing
perfectly with Bocca's dramatic intensity.
Ananiashvili's
mastery of mime may have been the great surprise of her performance, since the Soviet-era
productions she grew up on invariably replaced passages of traditional 19th century
gesture with nonstop dancing. Swan Lake
contains many such passages, and Ananiashvili deftly integrated them with the prevailing
musical impetus whenever possible, her hands floating through the sign language as if
dancing on their own. Her bold, high extensions, deep backbends and ability to highlight
all the details of the choreography without diminishing its flow made the lakeside scenes
impressive even without the sense of mystery and suffering she exuded. Odette, however,
should represent a heightened projection of the style of the swan corps, and that ensemble
danced wretchedly Friday, inflicting blunt prose on passages that should have matched her
eloquent poetry.
A
glittering, carnal Odile, Ananiashvili made the flurry of multiple turns in Bocca's arms
during the Black Swan adagio a striking contrast to Odette's exquisitely low unfolding in
his arms during the White Swan pas de deux.
Bocca
partnered her passionately, and always kept this "Swan Lake"
focused on Siegfried's emotional journey. He also displayed glints of the brilliant
virtuosity for which he's famed--particularly in a sequence of turns near the end of the
Black Swan coda. At age 35, however, he couldn't always make the bravura look easy, and
there were enough hunched shoulders and unstretched jumps to leave the performance below
the level of his phenomenal dancing in the less classically exposed "Tango en el
Maipo" last season in Buenos Aires.
Most of
the other soloists Friday had been previously reviewed in the Orange County
engagement. But Joaquin de Luz brought his sunny buoyancy and technical finesse to the
expanded duties of Benno, the Prince's friend. Andrew Mogrelia again conducted.
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